Jessie’s Blog

If you have a widescreen monitor and want games to be able to use it, you can find out how to do that with many games here:
http://www.widescreengamingforum.com

Please note that old DOS games tended to use a resolution of 320×200. Oddly enough, this is a 16:10 resolution and will fit perfectly on most widescreen monitors. If you use a 2x filter, the screen will be 640×400, 3x will be 960×600. This is one of the reasons I really hated it when Nvidia couldn’t do custom resolutions* on vista for a while because I like to use 3x filters in DOSBox and SCUMMVM. Just make sure that the “Correct aspect ratio” option is not enabled in whatever program you use, or it will be converted to a 4:3 ratio.

You may also wish to add custom WS resolutions in cases where you want to play in widescreen, but your video card can’t handle 1680×1050. You can use the custom resolutions option to add 1280×800 or 1280×768 if you needed a 16:9 res.

To do this with nvidia cards, open up the nvidia control panel and click on Manage Custom Resolutions. Then click Create. Then type in the resolution you want and the color depth. If you have an LCD screen, you can probably leave the refresh rate alone.

Click advanced to open up the advanced controls. Here you may need to play around with the “Timing Standard” For my Dell 24″ monitor, I always have to set the standard to CVT Reduced blank. If I don’t, then my monitor is not sent the actual resolution that I want it to get, but something close to it, usually in a 4:3 ratio. Then click test to test the new resolution and if it works, you’re done.

Please note that if you set the color depth to 32-bit, but later want to run a program that runs at 960×600x16, you’ll have to add that.
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*Before Nvidia drivers could do real custom timings in Vista, adding a custom resolution would do this:

960×600(16:10=1280×1024(5:4)
1280×960(4:3)=1280×1024(5:4)
1280×768(16:9)=1280×1024(5:4)

That’s right, it would just stretch and distort the resolution to the next one that it supported, even if the next one was the wrong ratio. This was bad for two reasons.

1. I’d have to set my monitor to stretch it to full screen. For the 960×600, this is acceptable. However, for the 16:9 1280×768, everything was distorted no matter what. This was a problem, because there are some games like the first Knights of the Old Republic that have 1280×768 as the only WS resolution that they truly support even with work. (There are ways to force another res, but most of those screw up the HUD.) And I’m still not sure how a 5:4 resolution became standard to start with.

2. Nvidia’s “Scaling” looks way way too blurry compared to my monitor’s scaling ability which looks quite clear, even on 640×400.

I and many others were so glad when they figured out how to do real custom timings in Vista and am very glad this is not an issue with Windows 7.

I am compiling of a list of programs and tools that let you run old games. This list will start with general stuff an then move on to game specific fixes:
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First off, you have the option of DOSBox
http://www.dosbox.com/

Basically, it’s a DOS emulator. If you don’t know what at emulator is, it’s a program that simulates another type of computer, game console, or even calculator. When you run DOS Box, it’s like running a real DOS computer. Only without having to manage conventional RAM or any drivers. DOSBox also automatically will try to keep the speed down if a program needs it.

If you don’t want to bother remembering the old DOS commands, you can use what’s called a “Front End” This will just let you install and play the games without having to bother remembering the old commands, or figuring out how to configure DOSBox:
http://www.dosbox.com/wiki/DOSBoxFrontends

I can’t recommend the best one since I don’t use them (My DOSBox’s “C: Drive” is a direct copy of the c: drive from my old P166, complete with BAT files for every single game.

I recommend downloading the CVS or BETA builds as they tend to be more up to date and they are compiled with custom additions like emulation of an MT-32. MT-32 was the old music synth that a lot of old games used. I used to have an LAPC-1 (Internal version of the MT-32) So I can say the emulation is pretty close to the real thing in most cases. It sounds so much better than Adlib or MIDI. However, it isn’t included in the main build because it requires the BIOS/ROM from a real MT-32 or LAPC-1.
http://vogons.zetafleet.com/viewtopic.php?t=9306

If you are going to use DOSBox for “later” games that use DOS4GW as an extender, I recommend replacing it with DOS/32A. It’s a completely redone version of the interpreter that can even replace versions of DOS4GW that were built into the games EXE or other files. It’s a more stable program, uses less resources, and plays better with DOSBox’s Dynamic Core mode. (The Dynamic Core is the fastest one.)
http://dos32a.narechk.net/index_en.html
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Now let’s move on to another great program, SCUMMVM:
http://www.scummvm.org/

This started as a program that is an intepreter for the SCUMM game engine that Lucas Arts used for their adventure games. However, it’s been expanded to cover many other engines. It seems some companies actually want people to play their old games and have given the SCUMMVM team the source files for their game engines. A full compatibility lists is here:
http://www.scummvm.org/compatibility.php
SCUMMVM does have the MT-32 emulation built into it the main branch. Once again, I recommend you get the latest versions. In this case because the daily builds are constantly adding new games and fixing issues:
http://scummvm.sourceforge.net/downloads.php#SVN
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If you buy any old games from Steam or Good Old Games, they’ll usually come prepacked with either DOSBOX or SCUMMVM.
http://www.steampowered.com/
http://www.gog.com/
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Here are some quick game specific links:
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Here’s a script someone made that will create a new installer for the Blade Runner game. This script will make the game work in Vista/win7, but it will also let you make a DVD so you don’t have to bother with four discs. I think I may have had to edit the line in the script that set the output folder, but it looks like that’s been fixed.
http://tinyurl.com/pgryut
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Directions for manually installing Star Wars: Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight:
http://www.jkhub.net/library/index.php/Tutorials:Install_JK
(JK is a 32-bit program, but it used a 16-bit installer for some stupid reason. 64-Bit versions of windows cannot handle that.
Once it’s installed:
http://www.lucasforums.com/showthread.php?t=186129
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Directions for getting Star Trek: TNG: A Final Unity running DOSBOX:
http://vogons.zetafleet.com/viewtopic.php?t=6260
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Use this to fix very bad graphics in Dark Engine games (Thief 2, system shock 2)
http://www.ttlg.com/FORUMS/showthread.php?t=121449
That forum in general will help you with any issues you have running those games:
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New D3D and OpenGL renderers for Deus Ex and other Unreal games:
http://cwdohnal.home.mindspring.com/utglr/
Site seems to have gone over its bandwidth right now though. Must be a lot of peole reinstalling Deus EX right now.
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http://www.si-gamer.net/gulikoza/dxmci.html
If you want to be able to play the DVD version of Wing Commander IV and a few other games.
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http://exult.sourceforge.net/
has a new engine for Ultima 7 that adds new features and runs on linux or OSX. See my note on it form more info
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http://www.squirtthecat.com/
Has updated installers/patches for:

Sierra Adventure Games
* Leisure Suit Larry 7 - Love For Sail
* Lighthouse - The Dark Being
* Phantasmagoria 2 - A Puzzle of Flesh
* RAMA
* Shivers 2 - Harvest of Souls
Sierra Role-Playing Games
* Betrayal in Antara
Sierra Strategy Games
* Lords of the Realm 2
Other Adventure Games
* Amber - Journeys Beyond
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Gabriel Knight 1 Windows: police HQ timer fix, and Hard drive installer
Gabriel Knight 2 Windows: DVD creator/hard drive installer/interlace remover
http://gkpatches.vogons.zetafleet.com/
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Space Quest IV patches:
http://www.spacequest.net/sq4/patches/
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Timer bug fixes and other patches for all other Sierra games:
http://www.sierrahelp.com/Patches-Updates/Patches-Updates.html
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if you have old Sierra DOS games and don’t want to deal with setting up DOSBox, go here:
http://www.sierrahelp.com/Patches-Updates/DOSBoxInstallers.html

These installers will copy the files from your CDs/floppies and install them with DOSBox and set everything up for you.

It’s even got a DOS version of the Gabriel Knight 2 DVD creator.
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If the game you want to play is a windows game and isn’t covered here, Download Virtual PC 2007 and install win98 or XP to a virtual machine and play the game there.
http://tinyurl.com/37lfk6

Still loving it.  I’ve even had a few cases where I’ve use the net connection to look up a few things while away from the computer.  The Yellow Pages site seems to have blocked all kindles from accessing it, but a quick Google search give me any number I want anyway.  As for the text size, I’m mostly sticking with the next to largest.  The largest just shows too little text per “page”.

I like how easy it is to bookmark things. Much easier than having worry about losing the marker with a book.  The cut option is actually nice for saving passages to go back to later.  The keyboard isn’t that great speed wise, but it gets the job done.  I haven’t had to use the dictionary yet, but it’s nice that it’s there.  I have looked up a few things on Wikipedia though.  I have spent more time reading than I have in a while.  The past few years I’d been sticking mostly with audiobooks and while I’ll still buy them, it’s nice that I can read books that physically are only out in paperback form without headaches.

As for why I got the Gen1:
1. Cheaper
2. User replaceable battery.  While Apple’s return time on replacing my ipod batteries has been great, I don’t know what Amazon’s would be.  Besides, I’d rather not have to send something in if I don’t have to.
3. SD slot.  Yeah, I have an ipod for the audiobooks and I don’t tend to listen to music while reading, but I like the option of doing those things I I choose to.

So far, I like it.  Finding a signal here was a challenge, but I’ve managed to find a few places with full bars for when I want to connect.  I probably won’t be using the connection often at the house. I’d rather browse the kindle store on my computer and just connect to DL anyway.  I kinda wish wifi was an option but I can see being able to connect in places without wifi will be useful so it will probably balance out.

The screen does get glare, but so do some normal books, just maybe not as bad. I like the display though.  It seems to be easier to read than my iPAQ or other things I’d tried with ebooks before.  As for the text size.  I haven’t quite decided between the second largest size and the largest.  It’s so nice to be able to make almost any book large print to give my eyes a rest.  I’ll probably start reading as much as I did when I was younger.

Which brings up one thing. I’ll need a light.  I’d thought this would be great for long car rides, but it turns out the overhead light above my seat is dead.  Reading before bed isn’t an issue since I have a light by the bed, but there might be other cases where one may be useful.  I’ll dig out my LED headlamp that I use when working inside computers first, but if not, I’ll look at reviews for the clip-on models.  I still prefer this to a backlit screen though.

So far I’ve only bought a few books, but I’ve loaded it up with a few public domain books and even a few manuals using some sites I’ve found and a program called Calibre.  It’s like iTunes for ebooks.  It can convert any text/book file to other formats pretty well, so far. So I can just convert any file I have to MOBI and send it right to the Kindle.

I wish I had had one of these back in school, with all my text books loaded onto it.  My back probably would have preferred that too.

I was looking around to try to find something to get with my two credits this month, and I saw that Penguin Audio had added books last month. Including all of the Jim Butcher books that they have the rights to: The Codex Alera series and the tenth Dresden Files book: Small Favor. If you don’t know what Audible is, read the end of this post.

First I’ll cover Codex Alera since all of it is on Audible. It’s a fantasy series written by Jim Butcher. I’m only on the third book, but it’s pretty good so far and has Butcher’s usual humor mixed in with the drama, politics, and action. Alera is a six book series and the last one will be coming out at the end of the year. The first five books are out in audio now and as I said, have been added to audible.com. The narrator, Kate Reading, does a great job with the books. Like most good narrators everyone gets their own voice, but unlike some, Reading actually does a great job with voices of the opposite sex. You don’t have to try hard to imagine that the voices are actually from a male.

Then there’s the Dresden Files. Kind of a noir/fantasy series about a Wizard/detective in Chicago. If you watched the show on Sci-fi, the books are similar, but the series made a lot of changes for the sake of TV. It wasn’t a bad series by any means, everyone here was sad to see it canceled, but it just wasn’t the books. All audiobooks are narrated by James Marsters, who some people might know from Buffy and Angel. Marsters does a great job as the narrator. His voice fits Harry perfectly and since the series is written in the first person, this was very important. He gets better at everyone else as the books go on to the point where his job on Small Favors was excellent.

However, the audios have been released in an odd order.

All of this boils down to the fact that Penguin only has the rights to give audible.com one book out of the entire series. My hopes are that Buzzy will agree to put the rest of the series up on Audible.com, starting with 8, 9, and 11 in April. If they do this, it will be cheaper for me to get the rest of the books and I won’t have to bother ripping a dozen CDs, so I really hope this happens. It will also let many more people listen to the series. However, even if they don’t, Buzzy now sells a pack of the first four books on MP3-CD for $99 so as far as audiobooks go, that’s not a bad price when other series go for $50-80 PER BOOK.

One of the great things about the Dresden series though is that even though they are all very connected, Butcher always keeps new people in mind and every book can stand on its own.

So if you want to try the audiobooks, I’d recommend you start with Small Favor and then see what happens in the coming months with the other books. If 8, 9, and 11 don’t show up in April, assume Buzzy doesn’t like audible, yet, and decide on the rest of the books from there.
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For those who don’t know, Audible.com

In the age when it usually takes you forever to get a return/repair done on something even if it’s under warranty, it’s always great to see companies like Apple, Nintendo, and others that have a nice fast turn around.  KOSS has to be added to that list.  I can be very hard on things sometimes.  Particularly headphones for some reason.  So normally I wind up breaking them.  However, in 2001 I finaly bought a pair of Pro4AAs for about $50 on sale.  They looked very sturdy to me, I’d heard great things about the warranty, I don’t mind phones being heavy and I prefer closed cup models anyway.  [These are the ones I use when I'm on the computer/consoles.  I just buy cheap over the ear sets for use with my iPod.]  About a week ago, I knocked them off the desk for the last time and the right speaker popped out.  I went to Koss’s site, got their directions and address and sent the phones in with a $6 money order.  This was last Tuesday.  Today, I got the replacement set.

Then I think back to when I had to get my monitor replaced because the input button had stopped working. (It got to the point where it had to be pushed in at an angle in order to change inputs, and then that stopped working every time.) I knew the problem.  I actually use the input button to switch back and forth between inputs often so it was just worn out or something, but proving that was very hard. First, Dell didn’t have a department for monitors.  So I got pushed back and forth between the desktop and notebook techs until someone finally took the call.  I was told a few times to unplug everything from the monitor and then plug it back in.  THEN, the person on the other end of the phone didn’t even know what an input button was.  Then I had to explain "There isn’t a button for each input. It’s one button that cycles between all five."  when they asked me to try "another input button".  Even getting my red-ringed 360 replaced wasn’t that bad.  Sure they asked me several times to power cycle and check that the power supply wasn’t the issue, but at least those were actually relevant questions from people who knew something about the product.

As I hinted earlier, when my iPod needed a new battery, I used the Applecare program to send it in and got it back within days.  When I got one of the bad launch Wiis that disable the NIC after the first update, I got a new Wii TWO DAYS later.  We sometimes forget to go online and talk about when companies do things right though so…

We had some friends come over with the puppy they got last month from a rescue group.  She spent most of the time trying to get our dogs to play with her.  Rusty was willing for a while until he got tired and went outside to hide.  Snoopy just tried to ignore her.  Sized down due to them being quick shots with a bad set up.

By the way, the puppy is a Lab/Corgi/Beagle mix.

Short Story, I had to move all the way to PA to get away from some family issues, but things are better now.  It’s one of the best things I did in my life.  I’ve been doing pretty well the past few years.    No kids or anything and I probably won’t have any, but I seem to wind up sitting for everyone else’s since I mostly work from home. Not that I mind though.  My vision is still mostly the same as it was in school.  I just now have astigmatism on top of the optic nerve defect that makes everything tiny.  So I need a normal prescription now.  The ones you guys saw me with in school were bifocals with a small magnification in the bottom part for reading and clear in the top. I can be so absent minded that a normal pair of reading glasses, that I took on and off, might have gotten lost. 

As you might be able to tell from photos, I now have a much better telescopic device.  It’s much more practical than the mounted binoculars I used to use.  Those things are only good for stationary use.  (The poor FOV actually makes them dangerous for walking.)  The main difference with the VES’s design is that I’m looking through my normal prescription most of the time. If I want to look at a sign over an isle, a price tag, read what’s behind a glass counter, I look at it, tilt my head down a bit, and then look at the item through the scope.  I still have to use my computer without glasses. The lenses that correct astigmatism, aren’t made for reading, and my nystagmus (Rapid eye movement) makes using the scope to read for a long amount of time migraine inducing.

As I said in another post, the scope does work for things about 7" away so I can use it to magnify the text on my iPod/phone/other things I only need to read for a short time. And I can now use someone else’s computer without having to lower their resolution if it’s something quick.

As for my own computer, I use a 24" widescreen monitor that I usually run at 1680×1050 (1920×1200 native).   After bumping up the font sizes and using the zoom option in Firefox, I’m fine.  I also have game consoles hooked up to the same monitor via a component video switch and have no issues with them as they run at 720p at most.  I might get a 27" one at some point since they have the same native res as the 24" models, but with larger pixels, but anything larger than that would be insane.  Click below for a view:

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=155866&l=203fe&id=1537479688

There are a few cats and two dogs in the house.  Both dogs were rescued.  Rusty is a Shiba Inu.  A pet store was going to put him down because he had a heart murmur, but we wound up with him under the condition that we have him fixed, which we would have done anyway.  He’s pretty much what you’d expect from a quick search on the breed.  (What they say about the yelp is true, it’s a horrible thing when you’re not expecting it.)  He’s friendly to everyone, but territorial about the back yard and has killed many small animals.  He’s very easily distracted and very tricky.  He knows how to get out of safety collars so we have to use a harness when walking him.  And the shedding…

Snoopy is a Beagle (With some Basset we think)  his old owner’s house was condemned   He had spend most of his first three years locked in a garage.  We were going to find another place for him, but he got very attached since we were the first people to actually pay attention to him.  He’s adapted pretty well since and doesn’t freak out when we leave anymore.  It took a few years for Rusty to teach him how to play, but he’s learned.  He still spends most of his time sleeping, eating, and barking at anything out front.

Gandalf is my cat.  He’s always wanting to know what I’m doing and has done some odd things in the past. Like turning off a light switch with his teeth when someone is reading instead of petting him.

After the speech, I went out shopping with a few people today and a friend had her three year old with her. Well one thing that my friend bought was one of those little toy laptop things for kids. After we left, everyone decided to go to Cracker Barrel for lunch. We knew it would take a while and while the adults can be distracted trying to solve the peg puzzle, this isn’t such a great idea for Kira (the kid). So we decide to bring the "laptop" in with us. It still had working batteries because it worked at the store so, I brought it in along with the Target bag to use for garbage.

We had to get through the following:
Tape
More Tape
Twisty ties
even more tape
Tape covered ties

We finally get it mostly out of the box (by finally just destroying the box) and see that the back of the box it still locked onto the device. Glori thinks to check the directions and yes. The first thing mentioned in the directions is how to get the device out of the last bit of packaging. Turns out it was basically screwed into the box.

Afterward, everyone was fine.  We all had a very nice dinner and headed back home.

I’ve been using the windows 7 beta since it became public.  For those who don’t know, Microsoft is coming out with a new version of windows soon.  It’s mostly a PR move because of all the bad press Vista got due to Nvidia and other companies putting out buggy drivers for a while.  This hasn’t been an issue with Vista for over a year now, but the damage is done.  People are afraid to buy a new computer because they’ve heard so many bad things about Vista so…  Most people are saying Win7 is to Vista what XP was to Win2k.  And it makes sense.  They both use the same drivers, and other basic things so there really isn’t that much of a change.  To add to this, the win7 beta is now my default OS.  The last time I used a "Beta" os on my main machine was with Windows XP.  As I said, there aren’t that many changes so not too many things can go wrong, but I wouldn’t recommend it for everyone.  Just try is out on a secondary machine or another hard drive if you’re curious.

The main change is the taskbar though.  They finally dropped the classic option (At least in the beta).  Because the taskbar is now very similar to OSX’s Dock.  It takes some getting used to.  The quick launch bar is gone because it "isn’t needed".  Which is true because the dock replaces it. You can right click on any shortcut and select "pin to taskbar" and it will pin an icon to the bar.  If you start the program, the icon will change and become like the old taskbar tab for the program.  This means that if you have the icon for Firefox the left of the icon for thunderbird, they will always be in that order.  (Unless you drag them to another order.)  Personally I had to turn on the labeling on the taskbar tabs so I could more easily tell when a program was running.

Another nice change is that if you delete a file in win7 that is being used by another program, win7 will actually tell you which program is keeping you from deleting the file.  Then I noticed this while I was transfering something to me NAS:

Very useful.  I don’t even have to mouse over the tab for a background transfer to see it running.  Some other quick additions are:

User Account Control:  Now has more options than on and off.  You can set it not to go off for changes that you make.  This way you only get alerted when a program tries to do something odd.  You can also set it so you get alerts, but the screeen doesn’t dim.  And finally, you can turn it all the way off, but I wouldn’t advise that since UAC does more than just throw annoying alerts at you.

They also have some sort of Win7 only network sharing scheme that’s easy to set up for newbies, but it looks like it would only be accesable to other win7 users.

There are some comments that wordpad and paint are more useful not too, but I haven’t looked.

for more information:
http://blogs.msdn.com/tims/archive/2009/01/12/the-bumper-list-of-windows-7-secrets.aspx